Madison students excavate Montpelier
James Madison’s mansion undergoing restoration
By Kim Ha, contributing writer
Posted on October 23, 2006

For five weeks this past summer, James Madison’s Montpelier home was also home to 15 JMU archeology students. Students spent 10-hour days, four days a week under the sun working with the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s archeological staff excavating the grounds directly in front of the fourth president’s mansion.
 
JMU students have been traveling to Montpelier for the past 18 years on various excavation projects.

“[The schools exist] to let students gain experience by working in a professional environment,” said anthropology professor Clarence Geier.

The grounds at Montpelier span 2,000 acres and along with the Madisons, housed slaves and contained various industries such as a grist mill and an iron factory.

Montpelier is currently undergoing restoration to restore the main mansion and the surrounding grounds to its original state in the 1820s when the former presidentand Dolly Madison lived there. Students spent five weeks excavating the grounds in front of the house to find evidence of the existence of a fence that stretched along the front of the mansion and a carriage road, which led to the house.

“Since then, the archeological team has found others that follow the curve where archeologists at Montpelier believed it to be,” said junior Tiffane Jansen, who is an anthropology student working at Montpelier.
 
Pieces of charred wood, glass, ceramics, pieces of brick and nails were uncovered and brought back to JMU. This fall students who participated in the summer field school are doing an independent study on the materials they found in order to gain a closer look into Madison’s personal life.

“Following his death all records are destroyed or lost,” Grier said. “We celebrate his role as president, but we want to understand Montpelier, his home, first established by his grandparents and built by his father.”

Few historical records exist about life on the farm, which makes excavation the best way to study it.

“We learn about human use of the site through time by studying when the artifacts date to because materials are made in different ways through time,” said Kim Tinkham, a senior researcher at JMU’s archeology lab.

At Montpelier, students are entirely responsible for photographing and sketching the materials they find. Eight to 16 people are accepted into the summer field school program at Montpelier, though the archeology field school programs offer a variety of different locations for students to choose from.

The interior and exterior restoration project on Madison’s home to its early 19th-century state will be completed in 2009.
 
“I greatly enjoyed working on the site and digging in the dirt,” Jansen said. “It’s a great feeling to be a part of finding and rebuilding something important.”